


Teach 'Em How to Say Goodbye

by lawofavgs



Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 03:32:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8605663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lawofavgs/pseuds/lawofavgs
Summary: There’s a gut-punch feeling when something you’ve been trying to repress breaks through to the surface. It’s a violent tug that you can’t ignore, and Mike is feeling it in spades.(Spoilers for 1x08 and the promo for 1x09)





	

He’s fucked. Fucked, fucked, fuckity fucking fucked.

There’s a gut-punch feeling when something you’ve been trying to repress breaks through to the surface. It’s a violent tug that you can’t ignore, and Mike is feeling it in spades.

God damn Robles, if it wasn’t for him and his stupid crush on Baker that he just _had_ to make public, none of this would have happened. Mike wouldn’t have had to take him aside to set him straight. Wouldn’t have had to riff off facts about Baker like he was reading her Wikipedia page to prove his point. Wouldn’t have had to look between Robles and Blip as they stared at him with confusion and shock and realization. Wouldn’t have caught himself listening to Baker’s awful humming as she stretched one long leg in front of her, the warm smile appearing on his face without his god damn say so.

So he makes up his mind: run. Get out of that room and get out of this city. Pack up his cleats and what’s left of his pathetic heart and get the fuck out of dodge before he ruins them both with these stupid emotions he has no business having.

He picks Chicago, a team best suited to his drive to win a championship (curse be damned). A team on the other side of the country.

(He would have said Toronto, put an entire boarder between them, but he doesn’t want to sit behind Russell Martin or end up a DH)

Not surprisingly, Chicago makes an offer. A draft pick and a prospect for Lawson (with the Padres eating some of his $16 million a year salary). The offer is dependent on a physical that Mike knows he’s going to pass. Word gets out, if the looks on his teammates’ faces are anything to go by. Some look sad, others angry, others understanding.

Ginny looks…like everything. Hurt and betrayed and upset. He can’t be surprised, given her recent confession that she didn’t know what she would do without him. It looks pretty bad on him to turn around and abandon her right after she said that.

He leaves this one up to Blip to handle. Mike knows, without reservation, that Blip is going to be a great captain. If anyone can make Ginny understand why this is happening (at least from the baseball side of it), it’s Blip.

Besides, he can’t look in Ginny’s eyes, see the hurt that he’s responsible for, and not break down himself. It’s hard enough leaving the Padres behind. Leaving her behind.

His last night before the next chapter in his career, she invites him out to some non-descript bar. He wants to decline, say he’s all partied-out from the night before with the rest of the team, but he owes her this. He can keep his feelings in check for one last night out with his rookie, right?

So fucking wrong. The fact that they look like two regular people on a date, dressed up and enjoying each other’s company doesn’t help.

In the end, he was just trying to tell her how proud he was of the player she had become, and how it was an honor to catch for her (he had called her by her first name, testing the weight of it on his tongue. It has always been ‘Baker’ when he addressed her and this felt almost too intimate).

He was just trying to cut the seriousness of the moment with a joke about her letting him have one if they played each other in the playoffs, as payment for his services as her mentor.

He was just trying to get one measly hug, painfully aware that he had never had the chance to wrap his arms around her small frame before this moment. He even held himself back, one arm going around her while the other gripped his coat.

He was just trying to look into her eyes one last time, not 60 and a half feet away, but up close in each other’s spaces.

How the hell did he let it get this far?

Because now, his eyes are slipping shut as she rests her forehead on his, noses brushing in a gesture so god damn far from platonic.  Now, she’s tilting her head and he can feel her breath against his lips and he feels like he’s about to combust if he stays on this precipice too long.

The feeling of his heart practically rebounding against his ribs while his limbs tingle in anticipation is unlike anything he’s ever felt before. Not his first kiss, his first time, his wedding night. He’s 36 fucking years old, how is she doing this to him before he’s even felt his lips on hers?

Finally, _finally_ , they kiss, and he feels her fingers grip the sides of his dress shirt. His mind short-circuits as her warmth washes over him. There’s no thoughts about teammates or goodbyes or Chicago or baseball. It’s just intoxicating sighs and the feel of her pressed against him. He’s terrified to pull away, to break whatever spell they’re under, positive that she’ll come to her senses. His grip on her tightens as if he has the ability to hold them in this moment forever.

Ginny does pull away, returning her forehead to its prior spot, pressing against his. He waits for the other shoe to drop. The apology. The “we can’t” and the “I don’t” that will have her disappearing into the night and leave him cold and alone (again) on the sidewalk with the memory of her kiss.

She takes his hand in hers, pulling it away from where he was holding her. Suddenly, she’s moving, taking steps backwards, tugging him along with her towards the hired car. He follows, as if he isn’t powerless to do anything else. He opens the door for her like a god damn gentleman and gives the driver a new destination: his house.

And he tries valiantly not to pass out at the implication of that.

*~*

She doesn’t date ballplayers. She doesn’t _hook up_ with ballplayers.

It’s her code. Everyone needs to have a code. It’s one that has benefited her as a woman in a male-dominated sport. She slipped once, trusted the wrong guy, and had to deal with the snarky, sexual comments afterwards.

She doesn’t hook up with ballplayers.

Except right now, she has Mike Lawson sitting quietly next to her in the car, staring straight ahead with a serious expression he tends to save for the field. They’re heading for his house and she knows what happens after that.

She doesn’t hook up with ballplayers, but she’s tired of pretending that she doesn’t want this. And she’s tired of depriving herself of what she wants.

It’s an emotional time for her, she knows this. She owes a large part of her major league success to Mike. Losing not only her captain, but her friend, it’s hitting her in ways she wasn’t expecting. He wasn’t supposed to leave. He _was_ the Padres, and that no trade clause was supposed to keep him in San Diego. She wasn’t ready for this. She definitely wasn’t ready for all of the feelings being stirred up in the wake of the trade.

Okay, fine, she has feelings. For Mike. Feelings which were made pretty damn obvious when she closed her eyes, leaned into him, and kissed him. Feelings which were confirmed when she made the choice to go home with him.

She doesn’t hook up with ballplayers, but she wants this more than she can verbalize. She can deal with the fallout tomorrow.

Tonight? Tonight it’s just about her and Mike and this _thing_ that’s been building between them for months.

She can feel how tense he is, fingers drumming against his thigh. For all his swagger around women, the fact that he’s nervous right now is almost endearing. Without thought, she runs her fingertips over the back of his hand, thumb rubbing back and forth over his wrist. She can see him in her periphery, looking down at their hands and smiling softly. In response, he turns his hand over, letting her fingers drag over the callouses dotting his palm like stars in a constellation. Knows that her own hand has similar designs.

“Gin,” his voice, rough and low, cuts through the silence, “are you sure?”

And that’s it. If she held any reservations up until that point, they vanished with 4 simple words from him. In response, she leans in, putting her hand over his cheek and kissing him softly. She’s sure. She’s so damn sure, she feels her whole body vibrating in agreement.

Her kiss seems to have done away with any hesitation on Mike’s part as well, fingers burrowing in her curls as he licks into her mouth with a hint of urgency. Nothing about him seems cool and collected, like she would have imagined if she ever pictured this moment. No, he’s heat and onslaught and a hint of desperation, like they’re running out of time.

They are running out of time.

Tomorrow, he’ll be Chicago-bound. There’s just over a month left in the regular season, hopefully some October ball for both teams (she tries not to think about the Padres making it, winning the Wild Card game, and then facing the top-seeded Chicago Cubs in the NLDS). Suddenly the person she sees and talks to everyday will be gone.

Pushing down the sadness she feels over the thought, she shifts closer to him. Maybe her kisses are getting a little desperate too, because they’re pulling into his driveway and it doesn’t register until he scoots away, unbuckling his seat belt and throwing what looks like a substantial tip to the driver.

He walks her up to his front door, hand wrapped around hers, and it’s a comfort. An anchor. She’s got a whirlpool of things to sort through in her head but he’s her focal point. She almost laughs as he unlocks the door and opens it, waiting for her to enter before him.

“I guess chivalry isn’t dead,” she teases, lighthearted in an attempt to stop the awkwardness before it starts.

“Yeah, it was real big back in my day. You know, knights in shining armor on white horses and all that.”

She laughs, sudden and loud and filling the space around them. That seems to be enough to get him to close the gap between them, stopping only when their bodies are lined up and touching. Ginny’s breath catches in her throat, hands fluttering to his chest and feeling the muscles twitch in response.

He’s waiting for her again, waiting for her to make the next move. His hazel eyes have the ability to be overwhelmingly intense, and this moment is no different.

Only different in the sense that he’s never looked at her like this under these circumstances before.

She knows what she wants, knows how to get it easily enough. One step back, then another, watching his face change from focused to confused. Sees the understanding as she walks herself backwards towards the staircase. When she turns, she hears his footsteps behind her, following her to the point neither of them wish to turn back from.

It’s a serious, deep, heavy moment, it is. That’s why she tries so hard not to laugh at the painting he has of himself over the stairs and is only moderately successful. Without warning, he wraps his arms around her from behind, trailing his lips over her neck until he manages to find the spot that makes her gasp. He notices and keeps his attention on there, kissing and lightly sucking until her knees feel watery.

“You can stay here while I’m gone,” he whispers in her ear, hands trailing up over her ribs but stopping short of her breasts, “that way you’ll have my picture on your wall again. Remind you of home.”

She wants to scoff, insist (lie) once again that she didn’t have his poster up in her childhood bedroom, but something strikes her about him reminding her of home and the words die in her throat. All she can do is throw a hand back, bury her fingers in his hair and give the stands a slight tug.

He takes the hint, propels her forward up the next flight of stairs to his bedroom. It’s about what she expected: blacks, whites, neutral tones. Lots of lamps and baseball memorabilia. Crisp white sheets over a king-sized bed. Mike doesn’t seem concerned with offering her the tour, guiding her straight to the bed, unzipping her dress and letting it pool at her feet. Turning her to face him, he lowers her to the mattress gently.

He stands at the foot of the bed, running his hands down her bare legs until he hits the heels she picked out for their meet up tonight. She feels him take them off, twin thuds sounding off as they hit the rug. His eyes are locked on hers, consuming and all-encompassing. She should probably feel uncomfortable under his stare, but his desire makes her feel powerful. Even as he unbuttons his shirt, he doesn’t look away, and it paints a ridiculously erotic picture.

The unbearable need for contact flares up as he crawls over her, muscles in his shoulders and triceps bunching under the movement. It’s funny, she’d have assumed their first time would be light, constant teasing and joking and one-upmanship. This is about as serious and intense as it gets. Maybe it’s the circumstances surrounding this. _Them_.

She doesn’t dwell on the thought of ‘first time’, as if a repeat performance is a given or even a possibility.

Mike’s got laser focus, that part isn’t surprising. He runs his mouth and lips and tongue over her stomach, all the way up to her chest, removing her bra without ceasing his exploration of her skin. When he finally gets to her breast, tongue circling her peaked nipple, she moans. It’s almost embarrassing how quickly her hips rock up, trying to initiate contact and give herself something to grind against. His eyes are back on her as one hand pins her hips back down to the mattress. She wants to curse him out, call him an asshole, but her words get stuck behind a groan.

His mouth moves almost everywhere – over hers, down her neck, over her shoulders and collarbones, down to her breasts and lower.

Not everywhere though. He seems to be pointedly ignoring her center, leaving her aching for friction. She can feel how wet she is and wants nothing more than to get her underwear off and have him drive into her. He doesn’t seem too rushed to follow through on that.

Another teasing pass, this time up her inner thigh and across her hip, and she bucks up off the bed.

“Damn it Mike, please.”

Apparently, she’s found the magic words. As soon as they come out of her mouth, he rips her panties down her thighs and off, shouldering his way between her legs before running gentle fingertips over her clit. Her thighs are already shaking like a rung tuning fork as he ducks his head and licks at her. He works patterns over her, the feel of his beard enhancing it all and she wonders if it’s possible to pass out from this.

He’s humming against her, vibrations hitting her in the best possible way and she almost feels bad about how hard she’s digging her fingertips into his hair. Every time her hips buck up, he responds with a forearm low across her stomach, keeping her planted and driving her crazy.

“Please Mike, I need…I need…” she mutters, trailing off after a particular motion of his tongue makes her head swim. He buzzes into her flesh again, a hmm-ing noise to prompt her to continue. The way his eyes find hers over the length of her body makes her shiver.

“I need more, please.”

The asking and the pleading must do something for him, because suddenly he’s slipping one, then two fingers inside of her. He matches the stroking with whatever the hell he’s doing with his tongue on her bundle of nerves and that’s it, that’s all, she’s coming. She moans his name like a damn porn star, one hand squeezing his shoulder and the other tangled in the sheets. He coaxes her through it, mumbling praise into her thigh of how amazing she is and how beautiful she looks when she comes for him.

With what little strength she has left, she yanks at him until he crawls over to cover her completely. Mike Lawson is built for sex, all heat and bulk and power. Her hands dart to the button on his pants, desperate to see all of him. She’s just barely able to get them open and down his thighs from this angle but he helps by shucking them and his boxers all the way off.

And, yeah, Mike Lawson is built for sex.

She may not be experienced, but damn. She’s impressed with what she sees and suddenly all she wants to do is get her mouth on him, feel the weight of him on her tongue as she tries to make him lose control.

Mike’s got other ideas, already reaching for a condom from his bedside drawer and rolling it on. When he’s back on top of her, he finds her mouth again. It’s equal parts passionate and desperate. It’s sharing emotions without saying words because god knows everything is already too complicated without verbalizing how deep they’ve fallen in this. Tomorrow, he’ll be gone. Tonight, this is all they have and they need to make the most of it.

He pulls back slightly, just enough to take himself in hand and run the tip of his cock over her cunt, over and over, giving her friction against her clit but nowhere near enough of what she wants. Taking into account his previous reactions, she starts talking.

“Mike, c’mon, please, fill me up. I need it. Pleasepleasepl-“

Her stream of words is cut off by him starting to enter her, slowly and carefully. It’s sweet, really, but she doesn’t want careful. She wants hard and ache and something she’ll feel in the morning after reality has come for them both.

When he finally bottoms out, she wraps one leg around his waist, using the other as leverage to counter his thrusts. It’s not even remotely surprising when they quickly find a rhythm, that easy connection they share everywhere else translating here. His hand finds her clit and his mouth drops to her ear, the multiple sensations working her over hard.

She feels herself building up to that amazing crescendo again, muscles twitching and pleasure pooling low in her belly. Judging by his harsh pants and stuttered thrusts, she knows Mike isn’t far behind. His fingers are desperately rubbing over her and it’s more than enough to push her over the edge again. A few more thrusts and he yells her name, the hottest thing she’s ever heard.

He’s careful when he drops down over her, keeping most of his weight from crushing her. She feels empty when he pulls out and discards the condom. The feeling is quickly diminished as he pulls her into his side, blindly grasping for the beige throw bunched at the foot of the bed to drape over them both.

She falls asleep with a twinge of worry about facing the day tomorrow.

*~*

When Mike wakes in the morning, it’s to the sound of his phone’s muffled ringtone, the device tucked away in his pants pocket. He really, really doesn’t want to get up and answer when he has the weight of Ginny Baker half-draped over his chest. But she’s groaning, burrowing into his side in an effort to block out the noise.

Maybe he’s missed his flight. Maybe they have a little time for a repeat performance. Maybe they have time to talk about what happened and where they’ll go from here.

With a grunt, he pulls himself up, leaning over the edge of the bed to answer the persistent caller. He flops back, Ginny immediately re-settling into his side. The smile that takes over his face is dopey and so far gone.

“Hello?”

“Mike, it’s Oscar. Look, I’d rather not have to do this over the phone, but news is going to break and you deserve to hear this from me.”

His hesitant tone sends up a red flag. “What’s going on?”

A deep breath, then, “The trade fell through, Mike. They’re worried about your knees. I know this is tough, but….”

His words stop registering as Mike tenses up, mind spinning over the implications of this.

He’s staying. He’s staying.

A soft hum against his skin catches his attention and he dismisses Oscar, ending the call with haste.

It was one thing to do this then head to Chicago where he doesn’t have to torture himself, being around her every day without being with her. Now?

Now they’re both fucked.


End file.
